


Hershey's Kisses

by skarlatha



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types
Genre: And Apparently So Does Hershel, First Kiss, Fluff and Crack, I Don't Even Know, I Just Love Merle OK, M/M, Prison, Stump Shipping, who knew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:19:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3123317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merle is trying really hard not to fit in at the prison. Hershel keeps leaving him chocolates with Bible verses on them. It's really messing with his efforts to stay on the outside of the group.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hershey's Kisses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Michelle_A_Emerlind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/gifts).



> "Oh my god," Michelle said, "I want you to write me a crack fic about Hershel called 'Hershey's Kisses.'" CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. I would like full credit for creating the "Stump Shipping" tag for these guys. Sincere apologies to amputees everywhere but really, somebody had to do it. 
> 
> Set after Hershel and Merle's conversation about the Bible in S3 E11 "I Ain't a Judas," so I guess technically spoilers for up to that, but not really. You can read this even if you're not there yet. Just assume Merle is at the prison and you're good.

After showing his hand and quoting the Bible at Hershel, Merle noticed that the man kept looking at him very oddly. Tilting his head and just… just _staring_. It was weird as shit and Merle didn’t know what to do with it. Merle didn’t like silence and that was all Hershel was giving him--even worse than Michonne. So he decided to involve Hershel in conversation.

Of course, being Merle, he didn’t really know what to say that wasn’t offensive, so he just went ahead with offensive. “That blonde girl of yours is a looker,” he said, sitting down beside Hershel at the table in the cell block. “Damn. ‘Bout to light my pants on fire.” He whistled for emphasis.

Hershel just looked at him with that weird-ass expression. The _I see what you’re doing and I’m not taking the bait_ expression. The _I’m going to wait until you say something real_ expression. Merle didn’t like it. So he tried again. 

“And that Maggie? Shit, man, I’d like to take her in a cell and show her what it’s like to be with a real man and not a China doll.” There. Even Daryl had called him out on being a racist prick for that one (“He’s Korean!”) and so surely Hershel would say something to it. 

But he didn’t. He just stared, and his eyes said that Merle was better than this and Merle knew that was a lie, so he elbowed Hershel and did his best creepy-old-pervert laugh. Still nothing. Hershel’s eyes felt weird on Merle’s skin and Merle jumped up from the table to escape. 

“Have a good day, Merle,” Hershel said as Merle walked through the door out toward the yard. Merle didn’t respond, but he filed it away as prison bitches be crazy and tried not to think about it anymore. 

//

They had enough food, so Glenn and Daryl made a purely frivolous supply run for morale’s sake. They brought back luxuries in a big burlap bag that Daryl had slung over his shoulder like he was some sort of backwoods Saint Nick, and even though by last count it was just October, they had almost a Christmas celebration in the prison. 

Half the bag was taken up with an enormous stuffed elephant for Judith. Carl got a deck of playing cards and a bag of Skittles. Maggie and Beth got a big bag of salt water taffy each. Carol clutched her two-liter bottle of Cherry Pepsi like it was made of gold. Michonne got some girly foot lotion and tried to pretend she didn’t care about it. Hershel got a bag of assorted chocolates. Daryl gave Rick a box of Mike and Ikes and a heavy-lidded _I’ll give you the rest later_ look that everyone (especially Merle) pretended not to see. 

Most importantly, though, Merle got a bottle of whiskey--the good stuff, too. He took it back to his cell on the top level and spent the night practically making love to the bottle with his mouth, complete with moans of ecstasy that made Daryl eventually come upstairs and threaten to smother him with a pillow if he didn’t knock it off. 

At some point during the night, Merle passed out, the bottle hanging from his fingers. He dreamed about weird things like he always did when he’d been drinking--giant birds the size of tanks, snakes made of licorice that disappeared when you tried to eat them, Daryl with actual wings wearing a diaper and shooting people with heart-shaped arrows. Hershel’s eyes staring at him. Weird shit like that. 

He woke up the next morning with a silver-wrapped Hershey’s kiss on his stomach. There was a note attached: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called… (Ephesians 4:1).” 

Probably Hershel’s doing, since he was the one who’d gotten the chocolates and was also the most Bible-y of any of them. Merle unwrapped the chocolate and popped it in his mouth, letting it melt there while he stared at the ceiling and tried to will his head to actually explode or to stop hurting but either way to stop pussy-footing around making the decision. He wondered if everybody had gotten the same Bible verse or if Hershel had picked out a different one for each person. 

He eventually went downstairs, following the scent of something probably rabbit-based that was being doled out in bowls. He sat down beside Daryl, who wasn’t even using a spoon to eat the stew, just picking up chunks of meat out of it and putting it in his mouth. Merle started doing the same. Dixon men didn’t need _silverware_ , after all. 

“So’d you get your treat this morning?” Merle asked after a few moments of eating in silence.

Daryl choked on a chunk of rabbit. “The fuck you talkin’ about?” he asked, looking just _way_ too innocent. Daryl was shit at the whole concept of a poker face. Or… actually, no, Daryl had a pretty damn good poker face, it was just that Merle could see through it, easy as pie. That combined with the fairly obvious beard-burn on Daryl’s neck made it pretty clear what Daryl thought Merle was talking about. 

“Your _chocolate_ , dummy,” Merle said, then realized that ‘chocolate’ could be an innuendo too, which was gross and he didn’t want to think about it, so he clarified. “Your Hershey’s kiss with a Bible verse attached.”

Daryl just looked at him, chewing his rabbit. 

“Shit,” Merle said. “Never mind.” He got up from his sitting position and carried his bowl outside to eat in the early morning sunlight. 

“Have a good day, Merle,” Hershel called from the table as Merle left the room. Merle frowned and went back to not thinking about it.

//

The next morning, there was another one. The note this time said, “Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me: I will render to the man according to his work. (Proverbs 24:29).” 

“Ain’t worked a day in my life,” Merle muttered, then ate the chocolate, thinking about whether maybe he should’ve. Maybe there was some alternate universe version of himself that was a decent guy. A mechanic, maybe, or a carpenter. Something that would have let him work with his hands. Something that would have let him _keep_ his hands. 

He wondered if Hershel missed his foot, if the old man wiggled his toes all the time like Merle still wiggled his fingers when he forgot he didn’t have them. The thought kind of started consuming him, to the point that he finally actually went _looking_ for Hershel to ask him.

Hershel was sitting on his bunk, reading something that was surprisingly not the Bible. Merle stood in the doorway and leaned there, crossing his arms, then realized how sexy he must look, all Dixony and manly and shit, and he didn’t want Hershel to get any ideas so he stood back up straight again. 

“Good morning, Merle,” Hershel said, looking up at him with those damn eyes again. Staring. Merle’s skin felt very odd under the scrutiny but he was determined to get his answer.

“You wiggle your toes sometimes?” Merle asked, trying for his gruffest, most dangerous-criminal voice and finding that it wasn’t actually possible to say the word _wiggle_ while sounding like a dangerous criminal at the same time.

“Yeah, I do,” Hershel said. “Doing it right now.”

Merle looked down at Hershel’s bare foot. His toes weren’t wiggling. That answered his question. “Okay,” he said, then turned and walked out of the cell. 

“Have a good day, Merle,” Hershel called behind him. Merle almost turned around, but he wasn’t sure what he would have to say if he did. 

//

“Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins. (Proverbs 10:12).” 

Merle didn’t eat the kiss this time, just picked it up off his stomach and carried it down to Hershel’s cell. “The hell you tryin’ to do?” he demanded, holding it out in his hand for Hershel to see. 

Hershel looked at Merle, looked at the chocolate, looked back at Merle. “Figured you might like something sweet.” He didn’t smile, didn’t do anything, just caught Merle in that stoic gaze that made Merle feel so weird all the time. 

“Ain’t nothing _sweet_ about me,” Merle snapped. He held out the chocolate at Hershel again, giving it a little shake to remind him it was there.

“Didn’t say there was,” Hershel replied, and the strangest thing happened: the very corner of his mouth tilted up just the tiniest bit.

Merle stared at it, trying to remember if upturned mouth corners were a sign of a stroke because surely Hershel wasn’t _smiling at him_. Nobody smiled at Merle. Even Daryl didn’t smile at Merle. So no way was _Hershel Greene_ smiling at him. No way. 

“I wiggle my fingers sometimes,” Merle said, then had no idea why he said it. But it was out there, and Merle wasn’t really one who knew when to stop talking, so he continued. “Sometimes when I’m all alone in my cell I reach down there and I can feel it, you know, with my fingers, only they ain’t real fingers and so I can’t feel it with my other parts. So it don’t actually do no good.”

Hershel’s mouth did that thing again and Merle frowned harder to compensate. 

“Least I don’t have that problem,” Hershel said after a beat of silence in which Merle was attempting to make a list of things he could have said to Hershel that were lamer than _sometimes I try to jack myself but I can’t_ and coming up pretty empty on that list.

But Hershel’s comment raised other questions. “You?” Merle asked, genuinely surprised. 

“Sometimes,” Hershel said simply. 

“I can do it with my left hand,” Merle told him, not wanting the man to think that he _couldn’t_ take care of things. “Just ain’t the same.”

“I can imagine,” Hershel responded. He was full-on smiling now and Merle didn’t like it. 

“Yeah well, I’m gonna go. Daryl needs me,” Merle said. “I’m supposed to help him with some… things. Walker things. Hunting things.”

“Have a good day, Merle,” Hershel said, and Merle fled. 

//

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. (1 John 4:11).”

“Don’t call me ‘beloved,’” Merle said, throwing the chocolate at Hershel.

“It’s the verse,” Hershel replied, not even flinching at the chocolate when it hit him in the chest. “The word of the Lord.”

“Well, knock it off,” Merle said. “Ain’t nobody’s _beloved_.” 

“Maybe you ought to be,” Hershel said. 

This time, Merle was the one who just stared silently. 

“Have a good day, Merle,” Hershel said. Merle wandered away, wondering what the hell that meant.

//

“And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. (Genesis 2:18)”

Merle scowled at Hershel. He was sure it was a good scowl because he’d practiced it on Glenn and Beth before walking over to Hershel’s cell. “You ain’t my _help meet_.” 

Hershel smiled at him, which nearly sent Merle spinning to the ground. “I have two arms, you have two feet. Sounds to me like we were designed for each other.”

“Oh hell no, man, that’s gay,” Merle said. “That might be the gayest thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life.”

Hershel just smiled and stared and Merle felt himself--oh god--popping a boner. Popping. A. Boner. Over Hershel Greene’s stupid smile. 

“You can come in if you like,” Hershel said. “Sit a spell with me.”

Merle didn’t consider it for even a second, just turned tail and ran like a scared baby goat. And he most certainly did not pause at the door to the courtyard to make sure that he heard Hershel telling him to have a good day. 

//

Merle made Daryl promise to come wake him up before Daryl went out for the 3 a.m. watch and then swore his brother to secrecy about the fact that Merle wasn’t asleep anymore. Daryl just shrugged and left for his post. Merle laid back on his bed and pretended to sleep for so long that he almost actually _fell_ asleep, but then on the steps he heard quiet metallic thumping. Crutches coming up the stairs. Oh yeah, he was going to catch that sick bastard this time. Catch him in the act. Of… leaving kisses. On Merle’s stomach. 

Then there was another boner being popped, and Merle reached down and pinched it to discourage it. It didn’t help, mostly because Merle reached down with the wrong hand and ended up pinching it with ghost fingers instead of real ones. 

Hershel was close now, and Merle waited for the feather-light touch of a chocolate being deposited on his stomach before he shot his hand out (the correct one this time) and grabbed Hershel’s wrist. 

“What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing?” Merle bit out, staring up at Hershel’s eyes in the dark. 

“Giving you a kiss,” Hershel said quietly, his breath sounding a little fast and erratic. 

“Well, stop it,” Merle said. “Don’t need no kisses from you.”

“Don’t you?” Hershel asked. He sat down on the bed beside Merle and Merle sat up to glare at him.

Well, that was what Merle _intended_ to do. Instead he sat up and Hershel leaned forward and then they were kissing-- _kissing_ \--and fuck if Merle knew what to do about that, but the only logical course of action was to keep doing it. Hershel’s mouth was hot and soft and tasted like chocolate because _of course it did_ , and Merle made a whimpering sound that he had to make a mental note to be embarrassed about later when he was back to his senses.

Hershel pulled back after a few seconds and then kissed Merle on the tip of his nose. “You ain’t got to be alone,” he said. “That’s all I’m sayin’.”

Merle stared at him. “Fuck you learn to kiss like that?”

Hershel winked at him and then slowly pushed Merle back down onto the bed and laid the Hershey’s kiss back on his stomach. “You asked me about my stump,” he said, smiling in the moonlight.

“Yeah,” Merle said, his voice scratching in his throat and his cock trying its damnedest to free itself from his pants. 

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Hershel said, and his smile broke into a toothy grin. 

Merle thought about that for just one half of a second and almost decided not to go through with it, but then Hershel leaned down and started putting more kisses--non-chocolate ones this time--on Merle’s stomach, pushing up the shirt as he went, and Merle decided what the hell. This was the apocalypse, and this was Hershel, and maybe they both really did deserve something sweet.


End file.
